Thursday, September 8, 2016

(Malay version below. Disclaimer: the Malay version is not a translation and I did not intend it to be so. Both languages have a different mode of thinking and different ways of conveying, and it is the meaning that I intend to convey, not the exact words)

Yesterday I had the good fortune of visiting my university for the first time. The first time I heard about it was, I think, during my undergraduate days. We had an Islamic Society dinner and some guys from SOAS were there as well.

I looked it up later and was quite intrigued. There's just something about the word 'oriental' that adds mystique to any word paired with it. Like how 'Oriental cuisine' conjures up an image of steaming tom yum made with a hundred different spices served in a 14th century Ming dynasty porcelain bowl (with dragons on the bowl, of course). Or how 'Oriental wisdom' brings to mind Master Oogway from Kungfu Panda.

Anyways, why did I choose to come here? You know, people try to rationalise a lot of their decisions as if they came about as a result of deliberate thought when actually, it was just a 'wow' or 'let's do it!' moment. I may spin stories about how my fridge is value-for-money, energy efficient, bla bla bla, while the actual 'wow' was the cool metallic silver exterior that made it look like it could be an Autobot in secret. And only then do we find good reasons to justify buying an Autobot.

I guess it was the same with this university. School of Oriental and African Studies brings to mind the kind of school that Indiana Jones would have gone to before embarking on his quest to find oriental and african treasures. It brings to mind professors speaking 10 different Asian languages and wearing kain pelikat (jokes aside, there is a Russian professor at this institution whose specialization is medieval Malay manuscripts. He can read old Jawi, which makes him more literate than 99.9% of Malaysians!)

And the good reasons kept coming in. Their page in Wikipedia had this bit of history: 'The school immediately became integral in training British administrators, colonial officials and spies for overseas postings across the British Empire.' Cool. Any school that trained an army of James Bonds gets my vote. And apparently Pendeta Zaaba and Syed Naquib al-Attas studied here too, so I hope real Oogways here could impart just a tiny bit of that wisdom to this unripe soul.